Optical Media Obsolescence as Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2016-05-06
·
1,073 words · ~5 min read
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a mere 10 years ago CD and DVD drives
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were a staple and present in virtually all PCS nowadays you could be forgiven
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for forgetting about your old loyal friend entirely since most laptop
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designs omit them in favor of Slimmer form factors many custom Builders leave
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them out to Save A Buck and apple no longer sells a single Mac with an
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optical disc drive but how did such a popular format go from near Universal
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adoption to being suitable for nothing but protecting tabletops history lesson
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time in the 1980s the most popular existing format for music was the
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cassette tape an analog technology that you couldn't copy without losing quality
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managed only mediocre sound Fidelity required manual fast forwarding and
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rewinding and always seemed to get tangled up in your player at the worst
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possible time CDs changed all this by allowing music studios to use digital
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recording for much better sound quality and and easier reproduction and thanks
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to their low production cost and greater data capacity CDs also made a huge
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Splash in the PC World with most software moving from multiple floppy
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discs to a single CD in the box then
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when CD burners or writers became available they were the bee's knees for
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data backups since they held nearly 500
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times as much data as a standard high density floppy disc and only about an
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order of magnitude less than hard drives at the time and it didn't stop there by
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switching from infrared to lasers that
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use shorter wavelengths of red light on DVDs and then devising methods to cover
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the entire surface of a disc with data then have another layer under it for
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double the capacity and then finally by switching to the blue light used on
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Blu-ray discs Optical made it possible
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to jam up to 100 GB of highquality
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movies with surround sound onto a disc the same size as an original CD not to
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mention that they're so cheap to produce that even Moore's Law hasn't been able
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to make USB drives or SD cards
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competitive so we're all the way into this video we still haven't answered the
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question then why did such a versatile medium lose so much ground to things
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like online streaming services are we really just too lazy to take our discs
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with us and stick them into a player well maybe but that actually isn't the
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whole story first of all Optical discs while definitely better than tapes do
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deteriorate moisture from the air can get into the metal layer that contains
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the data and cause a reaction that damages the disc not to mention that
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user created discs are written using dyes that break down over time unless
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you're shelling out for archival grade media and the discs aside the drives
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they go in are fragile too like mechanical hard drives an optical disc
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has a lot of moving Parts but unlike a hard drive which sits in a sealed box
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inside your computer Optical drives have to constantly open and close making them
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susceptible to user error and wear and
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tear especially compared to solid state drives or ssds with no moving Parts at
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all but even if all your precious equipment stayed intact nearly all other
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modern data storage mediums are faster than Optical discs anyway with even
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high-speed internet catching up and surpassing them thanks to services like
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Google fire okay lonus I get it they suck so then
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why do I still see these things all over the place well Optical discs haven't
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gone away completely despite these drawbacks because content Distributors
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still like Optical discs thanks to physical media being easier to lock down
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with DRM which you can learn more about here CDs and DVDs are still much cheaper
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than putting things on SD cards or flash drives like I mentioned before Gamers
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can sell optical disc copies of games between each other much more easily than
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ones they've downloaded making it preferable especially for console Gamers
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and audio files can enjoy lossless movie audio on Blu-ray for example something
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that even if streaming services did offer would be way more than the average
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us internet connection could handle anyway so while comparisons to other
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modern technology might make it look like shiny discs are dead it may
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actually be a while yet before we're all making disco balls out of our old CDs
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but if you were going to make disco balls out of CDs maybe you'd want to
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make a website about doing that with beautiful pictures and so you'd want to
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use Squarespace they offer simple powerful beautiful templates they've got
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costs only $8 a month for a basic plan and you get a free domain if you buy
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Squarespace for a year the sites look great whether you're looking at them on
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you know a computer or on a smartphone
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there's another reason that uh Optical drives uh have kind of we've had to find
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alternatives for them you certainly can't put a disc in those and well the
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Sony PSP I guess tried to do small dis anyway the point is that you can start a
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trial with no credit card required and start building your awesome website
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today whether it's for a blog or a store or uh like Luke's mom she's got her
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store on there actually he's raising the roof off camera right now and when you
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do decide to sign up for Squarespace make sure you use offer code Linus to
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get 10% off your first purchase so thanks to Squarespace for supporting
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Techquickie and to you guys for watching I guess that's pretty much it
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like the video if you liked it dislike it if you thought it sucked leave a comment uh if you have suggestions for
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future fast as possibles and don't forget to check out some of the great
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videos that we've got on our other channels uh Luke for example just
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finally did a review of the r9390x why did it take so long well
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maybe it has to do with our excitement level I guess you'll find out check out
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that video now